On CNN SOTU, Chairman Royce says U.S. must “shut off every dime” to North Korea

Yesterday, Chairman Royce appeared on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper to talk about the urgent threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Key excerpts below:

Don’t take comfort in North Korea’s failed missile launch:

“Even in failure, this program continues to advance. And they will be… in the not-too-distant future, in a position where they could hit all 50 states… with an ICBM. So… don’t take too much comfort in this…”

China must help address the North Korean threat:

“We have found that, unfortunately, China has continued to transfer some of the parts that North Korea has gotten their hands on… and continue to transfer the type of fuel that keeps the economy going.

“What we’re urging this president to do at this point is what was done once before with Banco Delta Asia. And that is shut down any foreign banks doing any kind of business in hard currency with North Korea because when we last did that, we shut off the money for their program, and we shut it down tight as a drum. And I think that’s the next step that has to be deployed…

“If China does cut off all transactions with North Korea, we’ll be in a position where once again the dictator will not be able to pay his generals… That’s the leverage, and we need that kind of political leverage, because that’s the way to get the attention of the regime in North Korea, and have them reconsider on their nuclear program.”

New tools will help U.S. shut off cash flow to North Korean regime:

“I also have additional legislation that I and Eliot Engel, our ranking Democratic member, are putting forward right now, in order to go with third party sanctions on some additional financial institutions worldwide, and cut off the ability of North Korea to use what’s called slave labor. This is the indentured servitude where the money comes back in to North Korea for their workers that they send out to neighboring states. We are looking at shutting off every dime of money that goes in there, because it’s very expensive to run a program like this… if [North Korea] cannot pay for the foreign parts and if [the U.S. gets] cooperation from China, [we] can shut it down and we must shut it down.”